Female literacy has surged recently in Iran and women now outnumber men in higher education, which could be explained as a result of single-sex schooling.

A displaced Rohingya woman sits outside in a temporary camp in Arakan state, Myanmar/Burma. The country started its first census in decades last week, but Rohingyas were excluded, which has many concerned about the future for the minority in the country. Image by The Irrawaddy.

Nermin Fawzi Sa’d explains how the opportunity of working from the home for female engineers in Jordan (and other Arab nations) is often the only way that these women can pursue a professional career in this field.

The majority of Zanzibar’s seaweed farmers are women, but recent harvests have been poor due to warming of the waters around the island. One solution would be to revive this once-successful industry by moving the seaweed farms further into the ocean, but there is one problem: most of the women cannot swim.

Three Turkish women have been elected as mayors in metropolitan cities during the recent elections; currently no major cities have female mayors and overall representation of women in Turkish politics remains poor.

Victims of wartime rape in Bosnia are losing hope of justice; it has been over 20 years, and many victims (and perpetrators) have now passed away.

For the series Afghan Voices by the BBC,Afghan female rapper Ramika speaks about her art and how rap gives her an opportunity to express herself.

The imam who married a 12-year-old girl to a 26-year-old man in Australia has been fined $500 dollars and is currently awaiting deportation back to Pakistan. The “groom,” who was staying in Australia on a student visa, had his visa revoked too.

Darfur is experiencing a recent increase in violence; this week, 15 villages were raided in northern Darfur. Thousands of people, predominantly women, children and elderly, had to flee their homes for a wandering existence in the wilderness.

Turkmen police are now doubling as morality police: cracking down on couples showing affection in public in the capital of Ashgabat and checking them for not only their ID’s but their marriage licenses too.

Aaida Mamuji, a female boxer from Canada, is returning to the ring after a two-year hiatus in which she focused on finishing her PhD.

Palestinian-American activist Nahla al-Kayali was honoured by the US White House as a leader for change.

A Muslim woman in Sweden says that while going through security at a small airport, an officer was tugging on her hijab in public, despite the fact that she requested that her hijab would be removed in an enclosed space.

A Muslim group in Malawi is under fire for claiming that according to Islam, women cannot be leaders. Malawi has a female president.